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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Interop 2011: Modernizing, Unlocking, and Innovating New York

At the fall Interop show this morning, speakers talked about New York City’s deployment of new network technologies. Representatives from Microsoft and Cisco promoted their visions of cloud technologies and management of mobile devices.

Post, New York City’s chief information officer, explained that the city has followed a strategy of modernizing, unlocking, and innovating. To do so, the city has deployed a private wireless network for its 300,000 employees, made city data more accessible, and has improved its “311” system to let residents contact the government.

The wireless network is a commercial-grade, hardened network built in 2009 that is private to New York City, Post said. It covers 300 square miles and connects to 750,000 devices. Applications include remote traffic control (wirelessly running the traffic lights); wireless meter reading; wireless video for “situational awareness;” handheld applications for the city’s 100,000 inspectors; and scanners and computers for police cars installed by the NYPD’s “mobile office.”

“CITIServ,” a typical data center consolidation project, and an initiative to improve “customer centric engagement” by opening the city’s Web sites to interactive communication also work together to modernize the city.

“Unlocking”, which Post said is unique to government, will bring more information to the public. The city is increasing Internet service in public libraries and offering Wi-Fi in more than 30 parks. As part of the effort, it also has created a portal with access to more than 4,000 city datasets at www.nyc.gov/data and is sponsoring a mobile apps competition to use the data. Several apps have been developed, like Sportaneous, to find open field time at city parks, and DontEatAt, which grabs health department ratings

Addressing innovation, Post pointed to the expansion of the 311 customer service center, which now includes online, mobile, and text applications. For example, “service request map” shows things like the location of reported potholes.

Wahbe of Microsoft focused on a “new era for computing” based on cloud services and more devices.

The cloud is based on virtualization, he said, mentioning cloud adoption driven by agility, focus, and economics. By the end of 2011, the industry will have installed 7.8 million physical servers and 10.7 million virtual servers. The trends indicate that the number of virtual servers in the total installed base will soon surpass the number of installed physical servers.

The economics of the cloud are such that, over the next few years, the cost of deploying servers could be ten times cheaper in the cloud than traditional servers.

Security concerns, compliance issues, and compatibility problems are the big obstacles slowing cloud adoption, Wahbe said. All these issues are being addressed, but there will continue to be a need for both “the public cloud” and “the private cloud.” On the public side, Microsoft offers the Windows Azure Platform, with applications on top of it such as Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online. On the private side, the company offers Windows Server and Microsoft System Center, with applications such as Exchange, Lync, SQL Server, and SharePoint.

But what makes this special is that Microsoft is focused on commonality among the private and public platforms for identity, virtualization, management, and development. Therefore, companies can start with the private cloud and move to a hybrid or public cloud solutions.

Wahbe pushed Windows Azure as a “cloud operating system” that is “open and interoperable” with support for Microsoft Visual Studio, but also Eclipse, and for .NET but also Java and other languages.

Microsoft showed a short demo, similar to those shown at the Build conference last month, using Windows Azure to create an application that worked both on Windows 8 and as an Internet application in Chrome. It used common services, like identity and single sign-on service.

A huge milestone, the average adult now has 4.3 connected devices. This year, 453 million smartphones would be sold, compared with 372 million PCs.

Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb showed off a connected mouth guard designed by a Seattle company called X2 to record sports collisions to help identify and manage concussions, all hooked to an Azure service.

Cisco’s Hajela also pushed the concept of cloud and mobile, but emphasized managing devices connecting to the network from multiple locations.

People are “falling in love” with their mobile devices, Hajela said, and they expect access to the Internet from everywhere—trusted networks, insecure Wi-Fi systems, and cellular networks.

By 2015, he said, mobile data will account for three times the data the entire Internet used in 2005. Overall, Internet data will multiply 26 times and 15 billion devices will be connected in four years.

IT administrators need to therefore create an infrastructure that will support this. Hajela described a future in which users could use any device anywhere; “contextual policies,” based on device type, user, and location, would control access to specific applications and data.

Such a notion includes a need for secure managed wireless networks, identity-based access control, and mobile device management. Different users get access to different information in different locations, though Hajela mentioned issues with using public networks in coffee shops and configuring bandwidth priority on home networks.

Hajela pushed specific technology areas like 802.11U and “Hotspot 2.0” for more secure networks over 802.11n; web and e-mail security; identity-based access control; VPN technology; collaboration and unified communications technologies; and home networking technology. Not surprisingly, he advocated for Cisco’s technologies in all these areas. Most importantly, though, he said IT departments need to create an “end-to-end mobility architecture” and encourage the audience to “bring simplicity to the mobile experience.

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